


loose lips sink ships

by theviolonist



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-08 00:12:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1919436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[House of Cards!AU] Jenny Humphrey is made up like a raccoon and whenever Blair holds a press conference she stands far to the right, where she can't see anything and can hear even less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	loose lips sink ships

Jenny Humphrey is made up like a raccoon and whenever Blair holds a press conference she stands far to the right, where she can't see anything and can hear even less. Afterwards she writes blunt, nervy articles that no one reads in her column in the Huffington Post; Blair thanks the heavens they don't, because what Jenny writes is much too often true. 

In February just after the New Hampshire Primary she catches up to Blair as she's going back to her car, breaking through the gaggle of reporters. Her make-up is running, big black splotches under her eyes even though Blair has never seen her do anything else than stand immobile in the back of a room. Blair braces herself for the question. It doesn't come.

"No comment," Blair says anyway, just to see the blank shock on Jenny Humphrey's face, and she slides into her car. 

—

When Blair was seven she told her mother she wanted to be President when she grew up. Her mother laughed in her face. Of course you do, sweetie, she'd said. 

During the first summer after her graduation from Yale, Blair Waldorf interned for the Obama presidential campaign. In 2015, at the staggering age of twenty-five, she became the youngest House Representative for New York's Twelfth District. In 2017, she became Majority Whip. 

When Blair was thirty-four, her mother died of the complications from heart surgery. Blair didn't go to the funeral.

—

"The press likes you," Nate says from behind the Wall Street Journal, orange jam toast in the other hand. "They think you have strong values."

Blair smiles. She does have strong values; she believes in winning. 

"I'm sure not all of them like me," she says.

"Well, no. You're still in politics. But they do like you more than the President." Nate sets both newspaper and toast down; his gaze fixes on her, fondness breaking from under the usual indifference. "They're not giving you Secretary of State."

"No," Blair says.

Nate doesn't say, _maybe next year_ ; as much as he believes in not doing anything as long as he doesn't have to, he also thinks, like her, that you've got to take what you deserve, which is one of the reasons why she accepted to marry him.

"This new website just opened," he says instead, "allegedly 'unbiased reporting on Capitol News'. Gossip Girl, it's called." He frowns at the name. "It might become something. Jenny Humphrey from the Huffpost moved there."

"Jenny Humphrey," Blair says. "I've heard that name before."

—

Jenny Humphrey has no past. She was born in Brooklyn; her brother is a semi-famous author of trashy novels, the kind which Blair despises and Nate reads occasionally, in bed after a long day. Her stepmother is Lily Rhodes.

She turns up at the opera one night. She sits through all three acts of _Arabella_ , unblinking. Her dress is white, and it's raining. 

She's leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette, when Blair leaves quickly during the applause to avoid a Supreme Court Justice to whom she owes a favor she doesn't intend to give him. 

"You can afford a better dress than this," she says to the girl.

Jenny gives her a look. Her eyes flash like a bloodhound's. "Yeah?" she smirks. "You like?"

"Those seats are 400 dollars," Blair says. "Surely there's something else in your closet than three-year-old H&M." It's see-through now, outlines her breasts and scrap-thin underwear. Jenny sees her eyes linger.

"I like to make an impression." Then, with a self-deprecating laugh, "To be honest, I didn't think anyone'd be looking." Judging from her expression, she knew there would. 

The car approaches smoothly in the rain. "Good night," says Blair.

Through the tinted windows, she watches Jenny watching the car leave, then smile to the ground and grind her cigarette under her heel.

—

Blair meets Jenny in a hotel three times a month. At first they sit in the lobby, drinking expensive liquor Jenny can't swallow: Blair smiles at her and gives her information and instructions on how to write it down; Jenny frowns and heckles but ultimately does what Blair wants her to. In august, when the lobby is overrun by tourists, they go up to the room. Blair fucks Jenny with her face against the glass, overlooking the city.

Afterwards she asks, as Blair is getting dressed in front of the bed, "Aren't you married? To a man?"

"What does that have to do with it?"

Jenny shrugs, hands Blair her cigarette. Blair draws twice, releasing the smoke in curlicues. It's been a long time, both the girl and the cigarette.

She doesn't have to be back home before one, so she sits back down on the bed. Jenny gets on her knees to kiss her. She smells like she dresses, tasty and provocative, like she's still in high school.

She leans back down against the pillows. "All those politics," she asks, "doesn't it make you, like, dead inside?"

Blair thinks about all the headlines who called an ice queen, a queen bitch. "No," she says. "It only kills part of you, so the rest learns how to suffer."

Jenny laughs. 

—

Blair got married at twenty. The Republicans in the House like that; they think it makes her like them, more conservative. They don't trust a woman who doesn't want to play house before she wants to be in office. When asked by old men what she thinks about children, Blair gives a sad smile and says she's considering it, when her life is less chaotic; she wouldn't want to stunt her child's development. Children are what's most important, after all. 

Blair got married at twenty. Neither of her parents were at the wedding; instead she got Nate's entire family and a parade of his ex-lovers. Blair didn't mind. She's jealous, but she knows what's hers. Nate is hers. They said their vows under a quaint little canopy and then went to sign their papers. Their friends sang Yale songs; for once, Blair didn't give a speech.

—

"You're sleeping with Jenny Humphrey," Nate tells her one night, not exactly accusatory.

Blair looks up from the budget report she was reading. "Yes."

"You didn't tell me."

"It wasn't relevant," Blair says. "She's useful; Gossip Girl is getting a lot of attention and she writes what I want. The sex is just a bonus."

Something uncertain flickers on Nate's face. "Is this about Serena?"

Blair laughs. "No. But I like the irony."

Nate smiles at her and they understand each other again. He frames her face in his hands, kisses her. She bites his lip in retaliation.

"You should bring her around the house sometime," he whispers against her mouth. "For dinner."

—

As a rule, Blair doesn't regret things. She's made mistakes, though arguably less than almost everyone on the Hill, but she's not interested in dwelling on them, or talking about them. Which doesn't really explain why she doesn't distract Jenny with a shiny new scoop the minute she asks, "You knew my step-sister, right?"

Blair dislikes playing dumb, too, even though she's really good at it; sometimes it seems like the only thing her mother taught her. "Yes," she says. 

The wind is brisk and cold and they're walking without looking at each other, the cold sun slanting over Jenny's cheek and making her look sickly, even younger than she is. "What happened?"

When Blair does look at her she's narrowing her eyes to see Blair, backlit by the winter light. She looks greedy, the perpetual greediness not only of the journalist but of the twenty-five year old girl. _Careful_ , thinks Blair, who makes a point of heeding her own warnings, most of the time; _that's dangerous._

"It doesn't look good for a politician to be seen with someone like Serena," she says. "Too much money, too much privilege. Too unpredictable."

Jenny gives a thin smile. No love lost there, apparently. But Serena isn't for all tastes. "That's not all of it, though."

Blair can't resist trailing a finger over Jenny's eyebrow, the swell of her cheek, her chapped bottom lip. The park is empty. 

"You're a journalist; I'm sure you know how to fill in the blanks." Jenny takes a step back, refusing to be condescended to, but Blair doesn't care. "Be sure to make up something that's worth having my name on it."

—

It's debatable whether you can even use the expression 'best friends' to describe what Blair and Serena used to be: looking back, Blair sees it more as a particularly perverse form of endangered servitude. She still has the memories in her head like polaroid pictures, deceptively pastel: the two of them on Blair's bed, Blair painting Serena's nails aquamarine; shopping for dresses to wear at parties people forgot to invite Blair to; eating in restaurants surrounded by paparazzi. Sitting on the bathroom with a drunk Serena and being suffocated by a kiss.

Blair ended up leaving Serena the only way she knows how, insidious and almost ineffectual, answering less and less phone calls until they weren't talking at all; forgetting birthdays, shared anniversaries, reunions. They don't go to the same parties now. Blair doesn't go to parties at all, if she can avoid it.

Actually, Jenny is a little like Serena, in some ways. It's strange Blair never noticed it before.

—

Jenny doesn't make trouble. She keeps meeting Blair, even though now she's getting antsy, searching for bigger fish to catch in the hook of her pantyhose. Blair doesn't tell her she's bigger fish. She dislikes entitlement. To calm the girl down she brings her back to Nate and they have a good time, the three of them. Jenny tries to look jaded even though she isn't. Nate doesn't kiss her on the lips, out of some sort of outdated reverse chivalry he insists on.

Afterwards they share a cigarette on the windowsill and Nate says, "She's not much. But I can see why you like her."

There are two answers to this: _I don't like her_ and _tell me, because I can't_. Blair keeps smoking.

—

This is the way bombs work: first you build them, for protection or because you want to feel strong; then you stash them in a drawer; and eventually you have to destroy them, for fear they'll explode in your face.

"You'll be good with launch codes," Chuck tells her when she makes the call, with the unflinching faith he has in her. She can hear him cleaning his gun in the background.

"What makes you think that?"

Chuck smiles into the receiver, twisted. "You're not afraid to blow things up."

Blair has to laugh at that. But that night she thinks about it, puttering alone around the house, attacked with insomnia in lieu of guilt. He's right; she's not afraid of letting things die when their time has come. Dust to dust and all that.

—

When she meets Jenny at the hotel the next Tuesday she lingers into the kiss, waiting to feel the tickle of a countdown thrumming under the girl's skin, but there's nothing. 

Jenny pulls back, smiling with too many incisors. "So," she says brightly, "what's new?"


End file.
